Back in early 2000, I spent four years working in Samsung’s LCD division, where giant sized TVs were pumped out of their football field-sized manufacturing lines 24/7. Manufacturing at Samsung always had a “war-like” kind of atmosphere, where entire fabs would spring up from scratch in six months and every new process would be ramped up to high manufacturing yields in a short amount of time.

I imagine a similar focus on high volume manufacturing at other successful hardware companies like Intel and First Solar, that make millions of units per month. This is no ordinary feat and is achieved only by a disciplined approach, operational rigor and a clear vision that “he who controls manufacturing eventually controls the market.”

Silicon Valley is the mecca of innovation worldwide, which makes the recent lack of successful greentech hardware startups difficult to comprehend. While there are a variety of reasons for this issue, one thing that might be missing from the greentech ecosystem is this Samsung-style intense focus on manufacturing.

Innovation is good, but scaled up manufacturing matters too.

Silicon Valley startups producing solar panels, batteries, energy efficient windows and other volume hardware products will have to achieve manufacturing at the scale of tens of thousands of defect-free units per month to make a dent in the marketplace. Having a superior product specification might not be enough if the companies are unable to produce the goods cost-effectively in mass numbers. In fact, their very ability, or inability, to do so might end up being the differentiator between survival and failure.

Technology transfer from R&D to manufacturing requires a different crew geared toward an operations-driven mindset and a brute force methodology that can quickly deliver a stable process. The 24/7 lifestyle that is required to deliver, say an 80 percent up-time, is painstaking, time consuming and requires dedication and commitment. At Samsung, the technology transfer engineers were treated like celebrities and provided with five star accommodations at the factory site. Special bonuses and incentives were tied to the speed of progress. One might say that’s an unfair comparison, but the reality is that Silicon Valley is competing against several such cleantech companies from all over Asia. Unless the startups have extremely revolutionary products that can tolerate lower manufacturing yields, there is a need to manufacture as efficiently, if not better, than the competition.

Having said all that, Silicon Valley was the birthplace of the “Intel Way” and has had a rich history of volume manufacturing. But an exodus of semiconductor fabs from the Valley to nearby states has taken the manufacturing focus out of the Valley and along with it, a lot of the manufacturing talent. This, in combination with the rise of Asia and the difficulty in obtaining financing for manufacturing has made it even more challenging for greentech manufacturing startups to scale up.

How to get around the manufacturing learning curve

Here are a few ways that greentech startups could help overcome issues with scaling up to volume manufacturing:

1). Obtain an experienced crew that can transfer R&D processes into a pilot line with an extreme focus on improving yields. Ensure that every employee understands that true success comes not from obtaining one-off records or champion results but from volume data obtained from processing hundreds of samples. At Samsung, no champion results were ever reported as an accomplishment in an upcoming line since those results are meaningless until proven at scale. Companies like Miasole in Silicon Valley took the right approach of involving Intel manufacturing experts for their solar panel factories and it would be wise for others to follow suit.

2). Manufacturing is a costly endeavor and gives the most bang for buck when it’s running 24/7. Hence it’s advisable to not wait for a perfect product but transfer an intermediate process and iron out kinks in the production process. A lower specification product with 90 percent yield might have better economics than having a higher performing product with a 50 percent yield, assuming the market will accept such a product for some time. There is no better example than First Solar who has continued to sell less than 12 percent efficient solar panels for a long time proving that there is room for a lower specification product if you make manufacturing extremely efficient.

3). Excellence in manufacturing depends on the company’s ability to expand and build future lines. For a Silicon Valley startup, a pilot line locally in the area might make sense to be close to the R&D team. But it might be wise to take the cue from other high tech companies and move manufacturing to nearby states given their lower costs of land and permitting, robust manufacturing ecosystem and availability of manufacturing talent. Several companies like Stion, Soladigm and others have already taken that approach, which is a good sign.

The importance of manufacturing to ensure a greentech hardware company’s success cannot be stressed enough. High-yield manufacturing allows a company to reduce the cost of its product and reinvest the profits into newer lines and more R&D. All of this requires a cultural change across the company.

The startups that truly understand the differences of personnel and resource requirements for manufacturing vis-à-vis R&D have a greater chance of success. Those that don’t might perish to the Asian giants who believe it or not, have figured out the art of volume manufacturing.

Kunal Girotra is a Director of Process Engineering at ThinSilicon, a solar cell R&D subsidiary of China Solar Power. Prior to that, he worked in various R&D and technology transfer roles at Samsung’s LCD division for advanced LCD and OLED displays. He can be reached at kunalgirotra@gmail.com.